Polyesters that are semicrystalline, particularly poly(butylene terephthalate) and poly(ethylene terephthalate), are used extensively in many applications that require good solvent resistance and good properties at elevated temperatures. They are ordinarily processed by injection molding, but there are many articles such as containers which are hollow and to manufacture these by injection molding is very difficult and expensive. Many such articles can conceivably be made by blow molding provided the polymer system has adequate melt strength and viscosity. Unfortunately, polyesters commonly used for injection molding have melt viscosities which are too low to make them suitable for extrusion blow molding. High molecular weight polyesters can be made by solid phase polymerization of polymers suitable for injection molding, but this operation raises the cost of the polyesters substantially. It would be desirable to have blow moldable polyester compositions made from the commercial injection moldable grades of polyesters.
The addition of conventional di- or poly-epoxides and, more recently, the addition of ethylene copolymers containing glycidyl groups have been suggested for increasing the melt strength and viscosity of polyesters (see Kometani et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,246,378). These solutions to the problem have improved polyesters to a limited extent for blow molding applications but have proved to be inadequate in providing materials suitable for blow molding objects as large as a one-liter bottle when the initial polyester is a typical injection molding resin. Therefore, a need still exists tor blow moldable polyester compositions which are derived from commercial grades of polyesters sold for injection molding.